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Old Sugar House

Mitchell Library, Glasgow Collection

A lithograph of the Old (or Easter) Sugar House in Sugar House Close at 138 Gallowgate. The building was erected in 1669 by a group of Glasgow merchants to refine sugar imported from North America and the Caribbean and was the city's second refinery - the Wester Sugar House had been established two years earlier in Candleriggs. By the 1680s distilleries had been set up at both factories to distil rum from molasses, the syrup that was a by-product of the refining process.

Glasgow's sugar refining industry went into decline during the 19th century in the face of stiff competition from large concerns in Greenock and Liverpool. The Old Sugar House was occupied by a wright called D Cuthbert and the building had clearly fallen into disrepair by the time when this image was published in Views and Notices of Glasgow in Former Times in 1848. It was demolished c 1850.

Reference: Mitchell Library GC f914.14353 STU

Reproduced with the permission of Glasgow City Council, Libraries Information and Learning